Can Unearned Income Make Us Fitter? Evidence from Lottery Wins

Joan Costa-i-Font and Mario Gyori
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Joan Costa-i-Font

No 8738, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Although lower income is associated with overweight (and obesity), such an association is explained by a number of other confounding effects such as omitted variables (e.g., time preferences) explaining that income effect on overweight. We study the effect of unearned income shocks resulting from a lottery win (windfall income) on both overweight (alongside obesity and body mass index) distribution. We draw upon longitudinal data from the United Kingdom, a country where about half of a population plays the lottery. Our results suggest no evidence of contemporaneous effects of income on overweight, but a significant lagged effect. We find a reduction in overweight 12 months after a lottery win. A 10,000-sterling win reduces overweight by 2-3 percentage points. Furthermore, we document a nonlinear effect up to 36 months after the lottery win, suggesting that small wins increase overweight and large wins reduce it. The effect of a lottery win varies depending on an individual’s working hours and educational attainment. A lottery win among low education individuals decreases the risk of overweight.

Keywords: obesity; overweight; income; windfall income; lottery wins; body mass index (BMI) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I18 J30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
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Related works:
Journal Article: Income windfalls and overweight: evidence from lottery wins (2023)
Working Paper: Can Unearned Income Make Us Fitter? Evidence from Lottery Wins (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8738

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